Men's gender role conflict and use of psychological defenses.

Abstract

The authors hypothesized that men would report using psychological defenses to the degree they self-reported masculine gender role conflict. One hundred fifteen men completed the Gender Role Conflict Scale, the Defense Style Questionnaire, and the Defense Mechanism Inventory. Canonical correlations indicated that men experiencing greater rigidity about being successful, powerful, and competitive; expressing emotions; and expressing affection to other men used more immature psychological defenses and some degree of neurotic defenses. More specifically, these men tended to use defenses of turning against object and projection and tended not to use principalization and reversal. The discussion focuses on the effects of male gender role strain, implications for treatment, limitations, and future research. Called the cornerstone on which the structure of psychoanalysis rests (Freud, 1914/1959), psychological defenses are important for understanding development, personality, adaptation, and psychotherapy (Plutchik, 1995). Although gender differences between men and women in the development of psychological defenses are recognized (Bogo, Winget, & Gleser, 1970; Cramer, 1991; Gleser & Ihilevich, 1969; Ihilevich & Gleser, 1993a) and instrumentality and expressivity have been related to psychological defenses (Brems, 1990; Juni & Grimm, 1994; Levit, 1991), the effect of gender role strain (Pleck, 1981, 1995) has not been examined in relation to the development of psychological defenses. Because the male socialization experience is theorized to create negative feelings such as anxiety and shame related to all things feminine, the development of rigid traditional male roles, or male gender role conflict (O'Neil, Helms, Gable, David, & Wrightsman, 1986), may help stave off the negative feelings associated with femininity much in the same way that psychological defenses manage negative affect. As such, men's gender role conflict should be related to psychological mechanisms of defense. If true, knowledge of this relationship would shed light on the protective mechanisms used in the development of gender role conflict patterns and would be helpful to those working with men who enact gender role conflict patterns. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between men's gender role conflict and use of psychological defenses.